Telephone network carriers, and in particular wireless carriers, derive revenue from air time usage and related services. Competition among telephone carriers for subscribers has lead to many carriers providing more air time minutes for the same dollar amount. To increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, interest in service, and revenue levels, what is needed are novel services and methods of providing those services to subscribers in a desirable and easy to use manner.
Wireless telecommunication markets may be divided into two segments, a high end segment in which subscribers use their telephones on a regular basis and also subscribe to various voice services, and a low end segment in which subscribers do not use their telephones on a regular basis, such as with a prepaid service plan or a low minute plan in which the telephone is used for emergency purposes only. What is desired by a carrier is to increase air time and voice service usage of both the high and low end subscriber segments for the purpose of increasing revenue. By providing access to thousands of voice based applications, subscribers may use their telephones for purposes other than calling someone. With respect to the low end segment, voice based applications may be more important to subscribers than text and graphic based applications due to the fact that wireless devices that support text and graphics are generally more expensive and are not an option for low end subscribers.
Conventional wireless telephones may now be used to gain access the Internet, which may be used for communication via text messages and for accessing information. For example, email may be accessed by dialing a phone number to a voice portal, such as a machine that communicates with a mark up language, such as XML.
Voice portals may be expensive to develop and operate. For example, voicemail is one of the most common services offered by a carrier. If a carrier were to develop a business relationship with a third party that created a voice based application, such as voicemail, the carrier would only be responsible for providing access to the application, and not the application itself. Using this strategy, the carrier does not have to invest time and money into research, development, and application maintenance. The business relationship benefits the carrier by stimulating air time usage while providing application control for the carrier.
In conventional telecommunications systems, a number of different telecommunications services, or applications, are offered to subscribers. Each telecommunications service requires a unique telephone number. Examples of telecommunications services that require a unique telephone number are automatic routing services, voicemail services, paging services, cellular phone services, and conference call services. One of the drawbacks of each service requiring a different telephone number is that managing multiple telephone numbers for a subscriber that uses multiple communications services can prove to be quite cumbersome. For example, a subscriber may have to provide a first telephone number for conference call services, a second telephone number for voicemail services, and a third telephone number for cellular services. Thus, a subscriber must remember all of the unique telephone numbers and what services are associated with each telephone number. Oftentimes, a party confuses the mapping of telephone numbers to services and reaches the wrong service when dialing the telephone number. For instance, a caller may dial a number thinking that he will reach a person, and instead the caller reaches his financial institution.
Another drawback of conventional systems is the lack of choices regarding the telecommunications services that are provided to subscribers. A subscriber may want a choice in application providers so as to get the best possible service to fit his/her needs. For example, a subscriber may require a voicemail service with many different features and options, while a second subscriber of the same carrier may require only a basic voicemail service. Still further, a subscriber may wish to provide other people with access to his voicemail, which may require an even more complicated voicemail system.
Unfortunately, with conventional systems such configurability of telecommunications services is not available. Moreover, a subscriber has difficulty managing a multitude of communications services, where each service has a different number. For example, if the subscriber wishes to update multiple aspects of his or her services over a phone, multiple iterative menu selections and presentations are required. Furthermore, a caller must typically call one number to update aspects of one service, and then call another number to update aspects of another service.
Accordingly, there is a need for a device, such as a wireless telephone, which provides for easy access to a variety of advanced features which reside in a telephone network. The device must be easy to use by a subscriber, provide flexibility for the carrier in providing a wide range of advanced services to the subscriber, provide control for the carrier, provide the carrier flexibility in routing a call to a third party, and provide security for the carrier to ensure that competitors will not be able to use the subscriber's telephone for the advanced features. What is desired is a device and provisioning methods that allow a subscriber access to third party voice based applications, while at the same time providing increased revenue for a network carrier.